I'm sure this is simple enough, but I'm going through "too many options" at the moment.

I finally bought something to calibrate my monitor with, the Spyder 3 Pro. I've done that. It sets up a profile, and does some magic and everything looks a little bit different - so I wasn't that far out before.

Now its the applications where I'm getting confused. Let's take Photoshop Elements.

If I take a random image I have lying around and open it in non-colour aware software, it has a certain look. With colour management off in Elements, it looks the same. If I turn on optimise for screen (sRGB), everything looks quite different. Greens go more yellow. Reds are lower in saturation. Blues also pale and warm slightly. If I turn on optimise for print (Adobe RGB) there is only a small shift compared to off. If I understand correctly, this is all that colour gamut stuff happening right? sRGB is a relatively small one so by limiting to it on a wider gamut monitor, everything looks more washed out. Print can have a bit more scope so there is less difference?

Going ahead, does that mean I should use sRGB as a safe option for web, and possibly use Adobe RGB for print, assuming the printers support it. The talk of using Blurb elsewhere made me look that up, and they recommend sRGB for their print. Do consumer level print services generally support beyond sRGB anyway?

Then in the menu there's options to apply colour profiles to the current image. Selecting those don't make any changes the display. Is that only applying a tag which can be interpreted later on?

Going back a step, I've seen in cameras there's usually an option to use sRGB or Adobe RGB colourspaces. I never played with them before. I assume it doesn't make any difference to the raw, but might on jpeg. Will I be losing out on colour info with sRGB jpeg?

I've been reading around and think I understand it all a bit better now, although I've yet to test it out via printing.

pgtips, what monitor are you using? Assuming yours only largely covers sRGB gamut, then the two options will probably look much the same. I have a so called wide gamut model, which seems to cover the same range as Adobe RGB. As such, if I limit it to sRGB, I lose out on that extra gamut and everything looks duller in comparison.

Now debating if I should switch my cameras to adobe RGB colourspace. Shots straight off camera in sRGB mode look fine when colour management is off, but dulls considerably if I turn editing software output to sRGB. I'm now losing touch with what's real or not. As real as it gets anyway.

From what they say it seems to depend on your output device and the tonal make-up of your image as to the best colour space to use. I suppose it is a bit like the choices you have to make with all of the settings on your camera when taking a shot. You choose the settings that work best for your creative intentions (e.g. slower shutter speeds to blur motion).